June 11, 2012

Your opinions on health care reform, taxes, and even the president’s dog come down to racial bias.

By Sasha Issenberg|Posted Friday, June 1, 2012, at 11:03 AM ET

The wishful scenario many Republicans envisioned after Barack Obama’s change of heart this month on gay marriage—the president’s African-American base, far less supportive of expanding marriage than other parts of his coalition, becomes demobilized or even defects as a result of Obama’s stance—already seems unlikely to be realized. Last Thursday, Public Policy Polling revealed a 36-point swing in black support for gay marriage among Maryland voters, who will have the chance to legalize the practice in a November referendum, since PPP’s last poll on the subject in March. Then, 56 percent had been opposed to the new marriage law and 39 percent supported it. In May, PPP found the numbers nearly reversed: 55 percent supported, and 36 opposed. By all indications, black voters weren’t abandoning Obama over an issue on which they disagreed, but adjusting their opinions to match his. ...

If Tesler was surprised by this, it was only because he believed views on gay marriage would be some of the most stable in politics, deeply anchored in moral values. Since 2009, Tesler has been chronicling what he calls the “racialization” of issues in the Obama era—the extent to which public opinion on topics unrelated to race have taken on a racial cast as Obama has staked out positions on them. Tesler has used polling experiments to identify a series of issues that have become enmeshed in complicated racial attitudes by dint of Obama’s association with them: health care reform, taxes, the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

... Tesler’s body of research suggests that instead of delivering what many suggested would be a post-racial presidency, Obama will have polarized corners of American politics previously untouched by race. Not only have racial considerations affected whether voters will support Obama, but they are beginning to renovate the entire architecture of public opinion.

Tesler’s mentor, UCLA psychologist David Sears, introduced the idea that it did not take policies with overtly racial content—like the Civil Rights Act or affirmative action—for racial attitudes to spill over into political views. In 1987, Sears, along with Jack Citrin and Rick Kosterman, published a chapter in the book Blacks in Southern Politics arguing that the mere fact of Jesse Jackson’s presidential candidacy three years earlier (the first competitive one waged by an African-American) had accelerated the polarization of southern politics. Using National Election Study survey data, Sears demonstrated that Southern whites who harbored racial animus (as measured by their evaluations of blacks and views on welfare and school busing) thought less of the Democratic Party after Jackson ran for president. Race was still shaping their views of the contest between two white men, Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale.

And, why shouldn't Jackson's demonstration in the 1984 primaries of the appeal of his kind of racial spoils system to a large fraction of Democrats impact voters' decisions in the 1984 General Election about which party should be in charge of the spoils?

By the time Obama announced his candidacy two decades later, the country appeared to have changed. The overtly racial issues like affirmative action and busing had largely receded from political debates, and what Tesler and Sears called “old-fashioned racism” of the Jim Crow era had all but disappeared from public life. Yet when Tesler and Sears looked at poll data from 2008, they found what much anecdotal reporting from that campaign had suggested: people’s decisions to vote for Obama were linked to their posture on race. Tesler measured this through a “racial-resentment battery” of questions he could add to any political survey—asking respondents if blacks suffered discrimination and whether the country has gone too far pushing for equal rights.

Of course, this is just a one way survey of whites' skepticism toward blacks -- when blacks express racial resentment they are marked as being low on racial resentment. It's Who? Whom? all the way down...

In the past, black candidates had been elected to lesser posts, especially big-city mayoralties, and had seen racially motivated resistance soften over the course of their time in office. Racial animus had been significant predictors of opposition when these candidates first sought office, but as voters saw pioneers like Los Angeles’s Tom Bradley fulfilling their executive duties, they appeared to replace their race-based expectations with personalized judgments rooted in a politician’s performance.

In cases, such as Tom Bradley in L.A., where the black mayor did his fulfill his duties in a racially fair manner. Bradley, first elected in 1973, went on to win four more terms.

In contrast, in cases where the black mayors ruled like racial chieftains, such as Coleman Young in Detroit, whites fled. Or, in the case of Marion Barry in D.C., got the feds to stage a municipal coup. Or, whites regrouped and stopped electing Democrats, as in the last five mayoral elections in New York City.

In general, the poor performance of black mayors, and, especially, black voters in choosing Marion Barrys (who was re-elected mayor after he got out of jail) has hurt the black brand. How many black governors and U.S. Senators are there at present?

Eight months after the inauguration, Tesler stumbled upon a serendipitous opportunity to see how those racial attitudes were affecting other issues on Obama’s docket. In August 2009, CNN conducted a poll about Sonia Sotomayor’s pending Supreme Court nomination, curiously splitting their sample between two different ways of wording the question. One version mentioned that she had been nominated by Obama, and one didn’t make reference to the president at all. By chance, because the Skip Gates “beer summit” was in the news, in the same survey CNN also asked how common police discrimination was against African-Americans. A respondent’s views on discrimination (on a spectrum of “very common” to “very rare”) was three times more influential on his support for Sotomayor among those who heard Obama’s name compared to those who didn’t.

Politics is about Whose Side Are You On? Supreme Court nominees clam up tight about how they'll vote on issues, so the main ways to assess them are either a deeply technical analyses of their writings or an analysis of who nominated them. The farcical Beer Summit incident was an unscripted look into Obama's basic affiliation: to rich black people, like Henry Louis Gates.

Tesler started looking for “issues that people don’t have strong feelings about, and issues that weren’t already folded into the current partisan alignment,” as he put it. Obama started feeding plenty of them—the stimulus, health care reform, cap-and-trade, all relatively new issues without firmly established loyalties. Tesler began working with the polling outfit YouGov to match how voters’ changing views on them matched up to their answers to the racial-resentment questions. He found a “spillover of racialization” into health care reform: Voters who heard descriptions of the contrasting components of the 1993 Clinton and 2009 Obama proposals were more likely to grow disapproving of Obama’s when they heard the presidents’ names—as long as they demonstrated racial resentment elsewhere in the survey.

The problem here is that whites are the only bloc that aren't allowed to be represented like other blocs, so they are vulnerable to highjacking by well-funded special interests claiming to represent anti-racial ideological principles.

For example, the events of 2009 showed that white voters care a lot about preserving Medicare. Whites tend to be getting on in years, they've paid a lot of Medicare taxes over the decades, and they want the bargain to be upheld when it's their turn to receive.

But, you aren't allowed to discuss what's in the interests of white people, so the Republicans like Paul Ryan go around arguing for big cuts in Medicare. What would Ayn Rand do?

What will Rahm do to save downtown and the Near North Side?:SCC(...)It was the worst ever on mag mile. people eating outdoors at restaurants were getting bottles and stuff thrown at them. there were groups of hundreds "wilding". hundreds. like packs of 300-400 beating , robbing etc. wow. just wow. i mean really wtf.(...)

But, you aren't allowed to discuss what's in the interests of white people, so the Republicans like Paul Ryan go around arguing for big cuts in Medicare. What would Ayn Rand do?

Yes but this could also be seen as a retreat from the commons, a commons which is increasingly becoming less white and more diverse. So this could be seen as something in the interests of white people.

By the way, Ayn Rand thought it was totally acceptable for people to accept gov't benefits they had spent a lifetime paying into at gunpoint. So, I don't think she would actually support cutting off the people who are most deserving from getting social security.

But yeah, if GOP tries to hurt Whites first with their cuts, it will be a disaster.

Someone above said "Medicare is a transfer from my fecund family to single cat ladies. No thanks."

Let's take this position to the logical extreme. I presume you think you are virtuous because you get insurance from a private employer.

Or maybe you are man enough to go "commando," and can pay any medical bills out of pocket. Or if one of the members of your fecund family gets sick, well that'll teach 'em.

I'm guessing you know how the basic concept of insurance works. No controversy yet.

Remember how I said you probably got health insurance through an employer (increasingly a less available item in these United States)?

You do realize that if your employer excluded coverage to employees with "fecund families" they could get a better rate right? You do realize that a single guy working next to you subsidizes your insurance coverage if you both pay the same rate? There are probably some adjustments on your bill, but they don't truly cover the extra cost to an insurance plan of a customer with a load of kids his fertile loins pumped out.

Whereas the young, single guy next to you pays more than he truly needs to cover his own risk and the insurance companies' profit.

Just saying dude, you are a single cat lady to someone else if you look at it the right way.

Or if you are old. Or have a genetic risk to some diseases. Or you like to smoke or drink or eat anything besides celery and tofu.

Assuming that is you actually have a family, or a large one.

I can also tell you that not too many Americans could afford to pay medical insurance premiums for a family if they had to buy directly from an insurance company.

I know when I was a 1099 contractor, I looked into it, and decided against it. It's been 12 or 14 years, but I remember thinking no way could I afford that with a family.

The wishful scenario many Republicans envisioned after Barack Obama’s change of heart this month on gay marriage

Ha hah! Yes, perhaps the dim-witted Republican Svengalis in the Beltway thought this was the long-awaited tipping point that would bring blacks back into the fold, but anyone with the tinniest grasp of racial reality knew it would have zero effect on blacks' voting habits.

Sheltered, brainwashed, deracinated white Republicans simply do not grasp the power of the tribe (even of that other tribe). They really think they can put together some package of ideas that will make blacks or Hispanics (and their oh-so-mythical "family values") just jump on board the Republican train.

Is is amazing, though, to see how quickly blacks seem to have turned on the gay marriage issue. If SuperBlack says it be good, then it be good. Kind of gives "Baa baa black sheep" a whole new meaning.

Funny, the last time I heard a white person use the N word in its nasty sense was in the late 1980s in a bar on Second Avenue, in Manhattan, in New York, New York, “the town so nice, they named it twice.”

You don’t hear southerners, or at least I haven’t heard southerners, talk that way anymore. And I remember how southerners talked in the 1960s, because I lived in the south. On a day-to-day basis most people were polite, but there was a mean and aggressive minority, college-educated as well as trash, that fulfilled all the stereotypes. That has changed dramatically, even in private conversations.

“Slate” writers should get out a little more and stop relying on tendentious surveys that reveal only that most southerners are more disappointed than angry at some politically prominent blacks.

She paid less than the NPV of the benefits currently set by law. Social Security juices returns for earlier generations by taking more from later generations. The Ponzi scheme dynamic where everyone gets more than they put in (in NPV) can only be sustained with a rapidly growing population, or if many people die before they can collect.

Cashing out existing Social Security benefits with the compounded value of their contributions would be a huge benefit cut. And that's OK. You can have an old age social safety net that isn't a Ponzi scheme.

I'm curious: has there ever been an instance when black voters turned out a black politician due to his or her corruption or incompetence? Granted, black politicians have been turned out in cases where they depend on white support, but if it were up to black voters, wouldn't they just remain in office, like Charlie Rangel?

"Medicare is a transfer from my fecund family to single cat ladies. No thanks."

The single cat lady next door was a schoolteacher for 30+ years till she took early retirement to care for her invalid widowed mother. I know for a fact that there was some government-provided in-home care to which the old lady was entitled but which her daughter preferred to do herself.

This retiree constantly does shopping, chauffeuring and other favors for several elderly people in our community completely free of charge, so that these old people don't have to use government programs.

She also takes stray cats to the vet to be tested, vaccinated and neutered, paying for it out of her own pocket. This is a big help since there was an outbreak of feline leukemia in our area a few years ago and several strays had to be caught and euthanized to prevent an outright epidemic. Our local animal shelter is overcrowded and unable to meet the demands placed on it by careless people dumping their fecund strays in our neighborhood (we're near the highway).

Feelings of white ethnic solidarity have traditionally been correlated with opposition to means-tested programs like welfare, and support for middle-class programs like Social Security and Medicare.

As America has become less "racist" the liberal/conservative coalition in favor of Social Security and Medicare has eroded.

Due to white ethnic solidarity, conservative voters in the past were uncomfortable throwing white grandmothers under the bus, forcing them to eat cat food or die from lack of care, even while they were heavily skeptical of welfare for urban single mothers.

Today's conservatives are more likely to view government programs in ideological rather than racial terms, and are thus more likely to oppose government aid, no matter who the recipient is.

She paid less than the NPV of the benefits currently set by law. Social Security juices returns for earlier generations by taking more from later generations.

And a hell of a lot of her resources were confiscated for purposes that didn't benefit her at all. After all the transfers between races are stopped, then we can start talking about transfers between generations.

It would make sense to cut programs for other racial groups first from the pro-white perspective though. Blacks didn't pay into AA, or DI, or any of that nonsense, so why should people who have paid into their programs get gipped(other then them getting sold a bill of goods ultimately)?

About 2 years ago I was listening to a radio program on KPFA in Berkeley with Doug Henwood. He is openly socialist and will give good interviews from time to time in part because he is steeped in leftist issues and part because he not particularly guarded or worried about protecting his career which makes him quite direct. He was interviewing political activist whose name I now forget that had worked in the John Edwards campaign as a canvasser. He made a comment that I will always remember which was that all of the Hilary Clinton and John Edwards supporters he was wooing had a bullet list of 2 to 4 things why they thought their candidate would make a good President. What differentiated the Obama supporters was that there were a significant number that could not give any cogent reason why they where voting for him. Unfortunately, Henwood did not go in for the kill by asking the obvious question but he really did not need to. They would simply give answers like, “I dunno” or “Just because” the same way my 16 year old does when I ask him about his homework. Obama is the proverbial yellow dog. Don’t underestimate the latent hatred of whites that has been cultivated on the left for the last 50 years, and not just among black people.

My gut feeling is the Republican Party of today wouldn't exist if it weren't for black people.

I'm not talking about a southern strategy, or even the mechanics of voting and resentment of black people.

My belief is that the positions of the Republican Party on things like taxation, social security, medicare, government regulations, environmentalism, just about anything would not, and could not exist if the US did not have a substantial population of black people.

I think modern Canada is pretty close to what the US would be if things were different as regards population.

It goes beyond the Republicans though, whole cities have been altered, people have moved to fairly ridiculous living arrangements like the suburbs en masse. Public transportation isn't funded or used in many cities because of this fact.

It is really incredible what the ramifications of the whole thing have been. It's really insane actually.

"My belief is that the positions of the Republican Party on things like taxation, social security, medicare, government regulations, environmentalism, just about anything would not, and could not exist if the US did not have a substantial population of black people.

I think modern Canada is pretty close to what the US would be if things were different as regards population.

It goes beyond the Republicans though, whole cities have been altered, people have moved to fairly ridiculous living arrangements like the suburbs en masse. Public transportation isn't funded or used in many cities because of this fact.

It is really incredible what the ramifications of the whole thing have been. It's really insane actually."

I lived in a mixed neigh(white guys say 'neigh' not 'hood') for twenty years or so. At one time many years ago, the local issue was closing the local Mom'n'Pop store at 9 pm instead of midnite because there were too many malt liquored drunks screaming obscenities in the wee hours of the morning. My Black neighbors, who lived closer to the store and bore the brunt of the noise, were all for closing the store at 9 pm, that is....until it took on the coloration of a black/white issue. Then they did an abrubt about face, fell into line and were outraged that the white folk would close their store at 9 pm.

For years afterwords I would say, "Blacks will slit their own throats so that whitey will drown in the blood."

Prof Woland said, "Don’t underestimate the latent hatred of whites that has been cultivated on the left for the last 50 years, and not just among black people"I think this needs to be emphasized. Whites are living in a fantasy world, steadily refusing to acknowledge the incrementally slow rise in the temperature of the giant media frying pan we whites(somnolent frogs) are living in. I would go further than Prof. Woland and say If you consume any kind of general media you absorb anti-white attitudes via the 'show don't tell' method. Mad Men confirms the worst behaviors of whites for the Left. Breaking Bad, in spite of it's implicit whiteness appeal, still makes whites look kind of goofy and not deserving of the wealth they have.

It doesn't matter who the blacks *say* they are going to vote for, they will all vote Democratic. Acorn (or whatever they are called these days) will make sure that all votes are Democratic whether you show up or not, dead or not.

Much of the liberal - conservative divide can be best understood as reflections of supply versus demand side strategies. For example the so-called "stimulus" should probably be called the "Demand side stimulus". Conventional post Keynesian economics believes that modern economies produce more than they can consume and so government needs to fill the consumption gap. Read Samuelson or Heilbroner.

But consumption isn't really much of a problem in America. I did my part. When the feds gave me that $85,000 of stimulus money - I spent it. It may or may not not have helped the national economy but it did wonders for my personal economy.

Republicans always talk about removing regulatory barriers and lowering mandates on small businesses. This could be called "Supply side stimulus". The main theme in Romney's stump speech is about Obama's ignorance of how business works. Maybe, but one thing is certain, Obama isn't interested in stimulating the private sector to increase the supply of goods and services. He wants to just directly distribute dollars on the demand side though grants and entitlements.

Similarly Democrats address the problem of race inequality only from the demand side. Blacks don't earn as much - give them food stamps and welfare checks. Blacks are less likely to be home owners - give them mortgages. Both of these actions reduce inter-racial disparities from the demand side.

What we need are Republicans to address racial disparities from the supply side.

Most basketball players in America are white. It's only among the very best that blacks dominate. This isn't fair. I favor "fixing" white legs and muscles so finally White Men Can Dunk.

The black leg is differently proportioned than the white leg. There are some genes somewhere that govern leg develoment. We as a society should understand and then control the actions of those genes. Right now being white puts you under a "glass ceiling", you can only get so good and then your inferior legs will keep you out of the NBA.

We don't want Affirmative Action for basketball. Nobody wants to be a token. We want equal legs.

Or maybe it's fast twitch muscle fibers not leg proportions. But the same argument holds. We know what kind of body plays basketball best - it's a black body. Let's figure it out and equalize everyone from the supply side.

Obviously the same argument holds for mental abilities. Black people seem to have smaller brains. We should simply fix that.

Presumably when black people have an average IQ of 100 like whites, all the crime, school performance, and income disparities will simply evaporate.

My gut feeling is the Republican Party of today wouldn't exist if it weren't for black people.

I'm not talking about a southern strategy, or even the mechanics of voting and resentment of black people.

My belief is that the positions of the Republican Party on things like taxation, social security, medicare, government regulations, environmentalism, just about anything would not, and could not exist if the US did not have a substantial population of black people.

I think modern Canada is pretty close to what the US would be if things were different as regards population.

It goes beyond the Republicans though, whole cities have been altered, people have moved to fairly ridiculous living arrangements like the suburbs en masse. Public transportation isn't funded or used in many cities because of this fact.

It is really incredible what the ramifications of the whole thing have been. It's really insane actually."

Agree 100%. I miss being able to walk everywhere and having a wide variety of stores everywhere. But if you can't afford Manhattan, you're stuck in this vast sprawling car-dependent suburbia. But, sprawl lets you distance yourself from undesirables. The cost has been altogether ridiculous--we can't have national health insurance like EVERY OTHER CIVILIZED COUNTRY b/c the NAMs will take advantage. GM went bankrupt because it had to pay for its aging workers' healthcare--unlike Toyota or Honda. As you say, we can't fund the public sector because NAMs are on the public teat. So we're destroying our own country to keep the NAMs from profiting?

"He found a “spillover of racialization” into health care reform: Voters who heard descriptions of the contrasting components of the 1993 Clinton and 2009 Obama proposals were more likely to grow disapproving of Obama’s when they heard the presidents’ names—as long as they demonstrated racial resentment elsewhere in the survey."

That is absolutely fascinating. Clinton's employer mandate proposal (basically the Nixon-Weinberger CHIP proposal from 1974) was more progressive than Obamacare (a weak tea individual mandate plan based on Bob Dole's GOP counter to Clinton in '93).If that isn't convoluted enough (yes, Richard Nixon's plan is to the left of Obamacare), its striking that the more progressive Clinton plan looks better when its contrasted with the regressive (it really is a terrible plan) Obamacare.

No wonder Paul Ryan is completely screwed up on the politics of this. The Republicans should have pulled a Nixon goes to China on healthcare and endorsed universal Medicare.Medicare costs have grown more slowly than private insurance costs over the past 4 decades. Contra Paul Ryan's lobbyist-fed rantings, it'd cost less to move everyone from private insurance to Medicare instead of vice versa (Medicare costs have grown more slowly the past 4 decades)

With questions such as "Do you support Obama's choice of Sarah Palin to be his VP?" and "Are you more for Obama's policy because he's pro-life or because he thinks our troops should stay in Iraq and finish this war?", no one could have expected Sal to get the kind of responses he did. Amazingly though, these "informed" Obama supporters were completely unfazed by the switcheroo, emphatically agreeing with what was McCain's platform, disguised as Obama's.http://voices.yahoo.com/the-howard-stern-show-interviews-harlem-obama-supporters-2074898.html

National review doesn't tell the whole truth. The Center for immirgaiton studies showed North Virginia, Orange County Ca and San Diego have lower native born welfare than Texas. But NR writes that 3 percent of Ca which a great deal are foreign born, in OC about 60 percent of those on the dole were immirgants similar to Texas. But National Review states tha 3 pecent versus 1 percent of Texas. Cailf hands out the dole more but if foreign born are considered then OC and San Diego welfare cases are much lower than Houston, Dallas which have larger black populations if you considred that only 19 percent of native born in OC received the dole versus about 40 percent in most Texas major metro areas. In California in places like Orange County and San Diego welfare is mainly a foreign born issue

A few months ago Bay Area AM radio played Alexandra Pelosi's interviews with NYC blacks, who were asked, "why are you voting for Obama?" One guy expressed surprise at her ingenuousness, replying, "because he's black."

"You don’t hear southerners, or at least I haven’t heard southerners, talk that way anymore.'

I noticed that in Dallas 30 years ago. In three years heard one white prole use the N word, only to find out he had a biracial grandkid whom he treated like gold. He didn't really care all that much anymore.

But recently I heard from a Georgia transplant that racism is alive and well in the exurbs of Atlanta, for good reasons no doubt.

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